Comments on: Do I Have the Right to Live?

By: Power of Doctors is Eroding… Grady Death Sentence is Arriving | Before You Take That Pill

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:35:14 +0000

[...] with the Advocates for Responsible Care we filed the patients into the board rooms and subsequent court hearings filed by Lindsay Jones on behalf of the patients. With some effort we got them to provide a year of [...]

By: Grady Advocates for Responsible Care

Grady Advocates for Responsible Care — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:27:49 +0000

Today, November 16 leaves the Grady Dialysis patients 48 days of life. On January 3, 2010 Grady stops the contract with Fresenius Dialysis Centers to continue their care. As the Advocates for Responsible Care we are trying to find a solution to help these 37 patients live. Please go to our website:dialysiscrisis,webs.com and donate to their medical fund and Take a Stand for Life!We are pleading with the counties and dialysis companies to help us to get treatment for these patients. On December 1,2009, we are inviting these key decision makers, with patients and advocates to find a solution that supports their lives. Join us that day in prayer that we may once again value human life. Many of these patients and their families work hard, pay taxes and want to contribute to their care. Help me to help them do this and to reveal the truth of their situation. Dorothy, leader , Advocates for Responsible Care

By: Anita Beaty

Anita Beaty — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:50:59 +0000

Dr. Bremner,
Thank you for your witness and your courage. Lindsay Jones is one of the best men I have ever known, and the courage of his agreeing to take this on is topped only by his courage to continue fighting for the current and future patients who need this dialysis to live. We need to go after the folks who have decided this outcome and are currently threatening doctors, judges, lawyers and clinicians who participate in this activism. We all know who they are, but we have no real idea what kind of pressure they are capable of. No idea at all. Let us call them out together as a kind of insurance policy to protect the front line heroes.

Anita Beaty

By: Janka

Janka — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:08:22 +0000

You know, I have been reading about this as a foreigner, but I never before thought of it from the doctor’s point of view, which is bizarre, considering that I am in the profession myself.

Now that I did, I’m heart-broken. How do the people required to do this work live with it? How can you send away a patient you have been treating, knowing that they need the treatment to live?

By: Dr. Rick Lippin

Dr. Rick Lippin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:56:30 +0000

IMAGINE…JUST IMAGINE… that all the money and resources we have squandered on H1N1 flu issue (about to fizzle) were spent on putting in basic health centers in poor minority communities.

By: Therapy Patient

Therapy Patient — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:14:20 +0000

Doctors provided free care to some poor people back before the government stepped in. Now a lot of doctors write up their invoices to get as much as they can from the government. A friend of mine’s dad was an orthopedic surgeon. Her mom told me about helping poor patients before the govt. stepped in. She’d even go to their homes with food baskets. But people are falling through the cracks now. Do we also have more poor people now or am I just seeing a lot more now? Certainly this is a difficult time.

By: Doug Bremner

Doug Bremner — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:02:40 +0000

That’s why I thought the t shirt (from an Emory public health student btw, who were part of the contingent) was so interesting, and the argument on behalf of the hospital that we have no constitutional right to healthcare. Which led me to ask, do we have the right to life? and is pulling dialysis which you need to live a denial of that? Someone pointed out that our ‘right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is actually from the Declaration of Independence, ie our secession from England. Whether we have the right to life is a question, which I assume must be in the affirmative, since we spend so much money to keep prisoners alive. When you start to pull the thread on American healthcare the whole thing unravels quickly. E.g. for profit healthcare is obviously a violation of the Hippocratic oath of drs to do no harm. That is why my father’s generation harped so much about the free healthcare they provided to the indigent. Well obviously their greed has led them to provide nothing at this point so that argument falls away.

By: Flavius

Flavius — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:55:43 +0000

I am truly outraged that the US healthcare “system” allows this to go on….but the American people have repeated stated through their representative that Health Care should be considered a business before anything else.

So if you state that health care is a “right”, then that makes it someone else’s obligation to provide said healthcare. At the same time, that healthcare provider has a right to be paid for their services.

So when does a patient’s “right” become a doctor’s “obligation”? Then who’s obliged to pay the doctor?

Clearly, healthcare is NOT a right, as it is implemented in the current US non-system. It should be, but it simply isn’t.

By: Doug Bremner

Doug Bremner — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:05:51 +0000

The good news is that we have been able to get an injunction to keep the clinic open on a wing and a prayer. There is no real organization working on this, just a handful of concerned citizens.

By: Doug Bremner

Doug Bremner — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:03:03 +0000

Neil Shulman has been trying to get the private facilities to each take a couple of people as charity, without luck. People look at this as a local issue, but I think it is a sign of the healthcare levees starting to crack. You can’t just treat people like so much garbage to be tossed aside like nothing. You start there and it doesn’t stop.